Yup, totally. I use Types to identify classes of thought. For example, person, movie, project. I could use a parent thought for this, but to me it's sort of a meta-hierarchy that I can use to narrow down classes of representations. I wouldn't typically need to have a parent thought represent these as it would have too many child thoughts to be useful. This works especially well when combined with colors and icons.

Yes... the downside is you can't navigate UP to them like a thought. So let's say I am on a book and want to navigate up to All books, you can't do that in the plex. I wish they would have an option that Types always show up in the plex as a Thought. I know I can search and have it show up, but it seems inconsistent that a Type can show up via a search but not via navigation. I'll add colors, maybe that will somehow unlock the mystery for me!! 😂 (j/k)

EDIT: Can people share how they use COLORS? Do you shade the Thoughts or just change the font color or both? I want to be cautious or my plex will look schizophrenic!

Rob, last year Harlan indicated that we will (eventually) have the option of displaying and connecting thought types in the plex, just like regular thoughts:

Quote:

"FYI, in a future version we are planning on enabling people to link types in the plex like regular thoughts so they perform both of these functions at once [serving as both type and parent]. The unofficial name for this is "visible types".

In the meantime, I rely quite heavily on thought types since the "Arrange Thoughts by Type" option allows us to display thoughts of a similar type together in the plex. In addition, when thought types are customized with colors and icons, they help immensely in quickly finding items in my megabrain.

If you are interested, I've provided more detail in a mini-demo brain about how I've been using both thought types and tags in my megabrain.

If you are interested, I've provided more detail in a mini-demo brain about how I've been using both thought types and tags in my megabrain.

Yes, I saw that.... that is what instigated this thread! I look at the extensive use of Types and was trying to figure out a more modest implementation for myself and how it might help. Thanks for putting that out, quite a resource for everyone! I find especially for The Brain, seeing real world examples helps a ton!

Thanks, Rob! Appreciate your feedback. Glad if the demo was helpful as a starting point for discussion.

To implement a more modest set of types, I would start by simply choosing a handful of the main kinds of items you are likely to add into your brain, and create types for those. You may choose to leave other thoughts untyped.

Then, as you continue to work with the items in your database over the next several weeks, you'll begin to get a feel for the types that would best most helpful, and you can adjust your starting set of types accordingly.

Do keep us posted on how this goes, and let us know if you have an "ah-ha!" insights along the way.

No, you can't convert a thought to a thought type, but you can create the desired type and then assign it to this "grouping" thought.

Alternatively (or in addition), you could create the desired type, and assign it to each of the thoughts that have been grouped together -- at which point you can then decide whether or not the group itself is still needed.

In most cases, I use both the thought type and the thought group since this redundancy usually makes it easier to find what I'm looking for.

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